


echo effect

by hugducks



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Katara (Avatar)-centric, Katara has been through a lot okay., POV Katara (Avatar), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hugducks/pseuds/hugducks
Summary: She’s twenty-seven when the first contractions hit, and she’s never felt more fear in her life. She counts: a nonbender, a waterbender, and an airbender.orMotherhood through the eyes of a woman born from war.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara & Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 105





	echo effect

**Author's Note:**

> enjoy :)

I.

She’s twenty-seven when the first contractions hit, and she’s never felt more fear in her life.

Aang’s away. He’s always away, and she’s normally with him, but not this time. Not when her belly looks like Tui itself, round and smooth and ready to pop. 

(It’s an emergency, he had told her, eyes wide with a panic she knew all too well. Zuko was hurt, Air Temple Island was under attack from a few radical groups, the acolytes were powerless–

She’d told him to go. The world needed their Avatar.

Katara needing her husband could wait.)

No, for all the births she’s assisted, she didn’t know quite what to expect.

She feels her water break, feels her lips part in shock. Sokka rushes in, helps her to the healing hut, and then there’s a sea of people and _pain_ and Appa’s roar and Aang–

Suki holds one hand, Aang the other. She doesn’t remember it fully afterwards, doesn’t recall if it was hers or Aang’s bending that got out of control. There’s water, and a cry, and then healers are bathing her in the cool promise of relief. Someone puts a child on her chest and some tea in her hands, and a vague part of her wonders if her mother was ever this scared.

 _A son_ , the healer says with a smile. She looks down at his tuft of black hair, his light blue eyes that refuse to stay open. Aang whispers a name in her ear, and it just _fits_ so well that she ends up snorting. She pretends not to notice his hints of sadness at the color of their son’s eyes. He’s not an airbender. He can’t be.

It takes all of two days for them to know. He’s not a bender at _all_. Katara hates that she’s relieved. And she hates that she’s disappointed. ( _At least_ , she tells herself as she fades into sleep, _at least he won’t be erased. Not like we did. Not like Mom._ )

But then: she sees him hold back tears when she heals one of his nastier falls. Sees him run up to Northern children, grin dropping as he tries to keep up. His Aunt Suki comes to visit one day, and he whispers a question to her when he thinks Katara isn’t looking. Her heart breaks. And breaks again.

Aang’s away, and isn’t there when she marches into Sokka’s home, tears hidden by the biting cold. The boy is three, toddling along after his mother with a smile that screams of innocence and eyes that have yet to see pain. 

_You have to_ , she all but yells, nails cutting into frozen palms. _He’s not like me_. Her fingers brush against her stomach, fluttering as they pass above a bump-to-be. Her son looks up at her with striking blue eyes flooded with wonder, and she chokes back a sob. _Please_. 

Sokka nods, grabbing his sister’s free hand with his own. _He’ll be safe_ , he promises, eyes steeled. _The world won’t get the chance to hurt him._

It does little against the fear that shivers behind her heart.

Aang gets back and soothes her worries with warm words and infallible determination. He takes them to Republic City, gets Suki’s guarantee that Bumi will train with her warriors. _He’ll be saf_ , he promises. _He’ll never have to fear the world._

The next time Aang’s out of town, she commissions a small dagger, child sized. She keeps it, just in case.

II.

She’s thirty-one on a full moon when the contractions hit again. 

She knows the difference now, knows what to expect, but it still takes her by surprise. (Air Temple Island has one healer, a woman from the north. The room is tall and empty and full of everything her husband’s ever hoped for. The moon is full, and she bites back a cry for what it means.)

She knows the pain that comes with the contractions, the fear. She knows when to push and when to breathe, knows when to squeeze her husband’s hand like it’s the only thing anchoring her to reality, but this is wrong, this is different, this isn’t like how she remembers. She’s surrounded by linens instead of pelts, and the air is humid instead of cool, and it’s not _home_. 

Yet suddenly there’s a baby in her arms, a _daughter_ , and then Bumi’s peeking in, hoisted on his father’s hip, and–

 _Kya_ she says, half lucid, _Kya_. Her husband smiles that same, sad smile, and their son looks at his sister with eyes full of wonder, and some part of her thinks that maybe they’ll be alright. (There’s a woman who gave her life for the last bender of the Southern Water Tribe. It’s only right that her child, the _first_ bender of the tribe, bears the woman’s name.)

Aang is by her side when her breathing gets shallow, when her eyes turn glassy and it’s all she can do to not build a bubble of unbreakable ice around her. He sits with her on the bed, more determined than she can remember. _No one will take them from us,_ he promises. _I won’t let them._

She remembers a young boy hearing of his muzzled bison. A part of her viciously approves.

( _Ambassadors Aang and Katara, Master Benders, split their time between the Southern Water Tribe and Republic City. The Avatar does his best to maintain peace in the world and reestablish the Air Nation; the Water Tribe Ambassador builds her tribe back up with the help of her Northern brethren. They have not released their childrens’ names to the press._ )

It takes a moment, but she’s home again. She grips her children’s hands, fingers shaking. (Aang is a beat behind them, and she can feel him shivering underneath his linen coats. She gives him a tired look that says, _I love you, but these two aren’t going to be quite as vegetarian as you._ He eyes their furs, and silently agrees.)

They get to the spot under the light of the stars, and she seats them down, two children squished between their parents in just the way they like.

 _Uncle Sokka can tell you all about the moon_ , she whispers finally, once they’ve taken everything in. _The spirit of Tui, and a Water Tribe princess_. Bumi curls into Aang’s side, arms grasping around his waist. Kya is hypnotized in a way the boys will never understand.

 _Look at the moon_ , she says, _and then a little bit to your left. That’s where your Gran-Gran is, now._ She looks at the two, at their eyes full of wonder. _She would have loved you two._ She tells herself she can hold back the tears, tells herself that she has a family now, that they’re safe, they’re together, and they’ll never be ripped away, but it’s a bandaid over a gaping wound that she refuses to acknowledge. Her family is together. And then her family is apart. 

Sokka spends a week with the kids before he moves out. 

_Chief,_ he nods, trying not to smile. There’s a glassiness to his eyes that neither of them acknowledge.

 _Ambassador,_ she nods back, hesitating. There’s too much to be said, and no way to say it. _Make sure Aang doesn’t get into trouble._

He laughs a low laugh, sweeping the kids up for a flying hug. _We’ll be safe, Katara._ He looks at the kids, a bender unburdened by the weight of the world and an older brother ready to do anything to protect her. _You’re not going to be alone._

She nods once, then once again, hands coming up to her eyes before she remembers she can bend the tears away.

Bumi holds Sokka’s hand all the way up to Appa. Her brother can barely let go.

III.

She’s thirty-four when the last ones come, and she’s ready for this to be over. Cramps, pain, the addicting relief.

Their son’s eyes are gray.

(Aang holds his son with a reverence that wasn’t there before. Katara knows he hadn’t dared to hope, not after the other two… he needed to pass on more than just culture. She hopes their children don’t notice in the years to come. She hopes he can be their father before he’s the Avatar. Before he shoulders the loneliness of the last airbender. She hopes, but doesn't count on it.)

 _Tenzin_ , he says finally, _Tenzin_. The words are a helpless prayer against something she can’t even begin to understand, and she takes his hand in hers. _Tenzin._ (There’s a hope in his eyes that wasn’t there before and she has to stop him because between her body and her soul, she can’t do it again. Not again.)

He’s lighter, now. Unburdened. He won’t be alone, he won’t be the last, but all she wants to do is cry out because how could he be so blind? They have three children now, three perfect children whose birthright is the ultimate burden, and _he_ might be free, but they never will be and Tui and La, their children deserve a chance at being normal. 

(But they have an airbender now, and she knows what little bit of normalcy she’s been able to hold onto is no more. _Air nomads will live on_ , he says with the childlike excitement she remembers. They have an airbender now, and what little time they weren’t shifting between Republic City and the south is now taut with a stress she can’t fully put her finger on.)

Their first bad argument since the kids comes when Tenzin is almost two, and already spinning around in tiny tornados of his own making. Katara wants (no, _needs_ ) them to be able to fight. Aang, purehearted Aang, does not. Not like she does.

 _They are not,_ he argues, _children of war. Not like we were._

She turns, every bit the warrior crafted from blood and ruins. _They’re not_ , she agrees, voice cold as ice. _But we’d be fools to think the world will be kind to them._ ( _It’s kind to nobody_ , she bites back. _Not even to the people who care enough to save it._ She hopes and she hopes that her children won’t have to protect it like they did. She knows that’s unlikely.)

Aang tightens his lips, eyes troubled. _We’re supposed to be at peace_ , he says finally.

 _I know_ , she replies, _but we shouldn’t depend on it_. 

He goes to say something else, but she cuts him off, brushing past him to the two ears pressed against a crack in the door. (These two look more like her, she realizes with a bitter taste in her mouth. The air nomads are no more.)

They’re eight and four and remind her all too much of a young girl and her brother, throwing snowballs at each other without a care in the world. She gives them a smile and shepherds them to bed, fielding any and all questions thrown her way. They’re innocent. Unscarred. It comforts her and scares her, but she has to have faith.

(They compromise. Their children will learn to fight, but not from them. Never from them.

Katara bites her tongue, knowing it’s a promise they can’t keep. They go to Republic City, and she fulfills her tasks as Chief. It hurts more than she’s ever known.)

IV.

(She sends her children into the world, when they’re old enough. Out of their shadows. Out of their grasp. She hopes they come back one day, with names and adventures of their own. 

They’re not children of war, she knows, but children of warriors. But when the ground finally holds her husband, her brother, she is just a Master and a healer. A whisper of history, somehow alive.

They come back, albeit slowly. They come back, scarred from the same world she tried to hide them from, and she curses herself for not doing better. For not being better.

They come back, an airbender, a waterbender, a nonbender. They come back, burdened by a necessity, a legacy, and a fear.

They come back. They come home.)

**Author's Note:**

> You can drag Chief!Katara from my cold, dead hands.
> 
> Homegirl has been Traumatized™ because of (but not limited to) her mother's death, and Will Associate Motherhood with the genocide that stole her mother from her. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [hugducks](https://hugducks.tumblr.com/)!


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